War Expert Backs Cbs At Libel Trial

January 23, 1985|By Michael Coakley, Chicago Tribune.

NEW YORK — One of the American government`s leading authorities on the Vietnam War charged Tuesday that Gen. William Westmoreland and his senior staff had produced estimates of communist troop strength that were ``much too low.``

Testifying in the CBS libel trial, George Allen, who specialized in Indochina for 17 years as a CIA and Pentagon intelligence analyst, explained that he had become critical of the general`s command in the months leading to the enemy`s all-out Tet offensive of January, 1968.

``It became clear that there was a lack of good faith on their part,``

Allen said, referring to charges that members of Westmoreland`s staff refused to record the growing communist force in reports to Washington.

Allen, 58, who still works as a CIA consultant, is the highest-ranking intelligence official to appear as a witness in behalf of the network.

HIS TESTIMONY, which began late in the day and is expected to continue through the week, already has bolstered the central charges made in the 1982 CBS documentary that prompted Westmoreland`s $120 million libel suit against the network.

In the documentary, ``The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,`` CBS accused Westmoreland and his officers of conspiring to deceive President Lyndon Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff by underestimating the size of the enemy`s overall troop commitment.

The program said the deception, designed to make the war appear more winnable, was accomplished partly by eliminating from official counts one key category of communist forces, the Viet Cong`s ``home guard`` self-defense units. That decision was not justified, CBS said, because these village-based defenders were able to plant mines and inflict heavy casualties on U.S. soldiers.

Allen answered questions by CBS attorney David Boies with confidence. He told the jury that during the 1967-68 period covered by the documentary, he was the first deputy to George Carver, then director of the CIA`s Vietnam desk.

AT A HONOLULU conference in February, 1967, Allen said, representatives of the CIA and Westmoreland`s staff agreed that the enemy troop-strength figures reported by the general`s staff were ``much too low`` and needed to be increased substantially.

Despite this ``consensus,`` Westmoreland`s intelligence officers refused to alter their count through the rest of that year, Allen said. This made him suspicious of the general and his officers, he said.

Allen`s testimony followed that of one of his former assistants in Vietnam, Samuel Adams, a CBS consultant for the documentary and now a defendant.

In his testimony, Adams repeated a CBS charge that Westmoreland had ordered his intelligence officers to keep the figure for communist troops below 300,000, though there was evidence that the actual number was far higher. The purpose of this ``ceiling`` was to create a false impression of optimism at the White House and Defense Department, Adams said.

ALLEN, THOUGH not asked about the alleged ceiling, praised Adams as a

``skilled and competent analyst`` and as ``a man with an unusually high sense of professional integrity.``

Regarding the self-defense troops, Allen agreed with the CBS charge that these forces often were armed heavily and were dangerous because they laid lethal booby traps.

``Sometimes they would actually engage in a firefight, killing U.S. and South Vietnamese forces,`` Allen said. Adams estimated that self-defense units were responsible for about 40 percent of American casualties, many of those caused by land mines.

In earlier testimony, Westmoreland belittled the military potential of the home guards, arguing that most were poorly armed old men, boys and women who possessed ``no offensive capability.`` He said Washington policymakers would have been misled if the home guards continued to be included in figures for enemy troop strength.